Bourne Shell Exit Status Examples For Linux and Unix

Typical Values Of Exit Status On Bourne Shell

• 0 – Success.
• 1 – A built-in command failure.
• 2 – A syntax error has occurred.
• 3 – Signal received that is not trapped.

How do I print exit status when using bourne shell?

Type the command:
$ ls
To print its exit status type the command:
$ echo $?
Try a few more examples:
date1
echo $?
date
echo $?
cat /etc/passwd
echo $?
grep vivek /etc/passwd
echo $?

Linux or Unix exit code tutorial for /bin/sh with examples

How to store or use exit codes in scripts

To store exit status of the last executed command to a shell variable called status, enter:
command1
status=$?
You can use exit status with test command or if command too.

#!/bin/sh
user="$1"
if grep "$user" /etc/passwd; then
        echo "$user has an account"
else
        echo "$user doesn't have an account"
fi

Run it as follows:
./script-name vivek
The grep command is used as condition but it can actually be any command. If it returns a zero exit status, the condition is true; otherwise, it is false. In this example, the while loop executes given commands as long as condition is true. Again, condition can be any command, and is true if the command exits with a zero exit status.

while condition; do
        commands
done

Here is another simple example:

#!/bin/sh
x=0
while [ $x != 3 ]
do
     let x=x+1
    echo $x
done

Here is another example:

#!/bin/sh
while [ -r "$1" ]
do
    cat $1 >> output
    shift
done

Run it as follows:
./script-name file1 file2 fil3
cat output

How to set an exit code value for my own script

To set an exit code in your script use:
exit N
exit 0
exit 999

Conclusion

This page showed how to get exit status of command when using Bourne shell (sh). For more info see:

• The exit status of a command
• Bash get exit code of command on a Linux / Unix
• Bash Find out the exit codes of all piped commands
• GNU/bash man page online here